Live Webcast Of Tim Geithner Testimony Before The Senate Finance Committee On The 2011 Budget

Watch Tim Geithner's testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on the President's amusing 2011 budget live and commercial free, here. It is time someone asks why the GSEs continue getting the Federal Budget exemption.

We hope, although it is very unlikely, Senator Bunning somehow makes a guest appearance with some very directed questions.

Has he said yet that if we don't approve the budget 100% it'll lead to a zombie apocalypse and that if we want our children not to have their brains eaten by next weekend we should stop asking questions as everyone involved is honorable and trustworthy?

"What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson

Lizzy; violence is always the answer when it comes to corrupt governments and government officials. Shit, considering everything that happened in the last 70 years the most peaceful political ideology seems to be anarchism.

and the debt subsidy from ZIRP ( on 6T of deposits) and TGLP as a beginning...iof course then there is the associated cost of 'reflation" as measured in rising food, commodity or unemployment as companies are forced to cut more and more to hold back the torrent of the FRN printing tsunami. The idea that TARP is a good investment is something only people in DC and CNBC could embrace.

Rockefeller: Mr. Geithner, I know I'm a man but sometimes I can't help but think of myself as little more than a coal miner's daughter... and sometimes, when I look at your president's budget, I do not see the support I am looking for.

Geithner: We are very supportive and are working to provide the funds for a clean coal miner's daughter. The answer to your concerns and your sex change sir is indeed in new technology.

He also said that when you don't help community banks, you hurt the small businesses that depend upon them. Spoken like a true champion of that cause. He then turned around and blamed those banks for not taking advantage of the TARP money because of "all the strings attached." An ironic metaphor coming from a Goldman puppet.

DAVOS, Switzerland — If there was one takeaway from the annual gathering of business and political leaders in Davos this year, it was this: trust in governments, corporations and above all banks has become as elusive as sure footing on the icy streets of this Alpine resort.

There was general relief that the financial system had been pulled back from the abyss glimpsed by many speakers at Davos a year ago. As the chairman of the British bank HSBC, Stephen K. Green, put it, “We’re in a better place than we were then” although “there has been a huge breakdown in trust.” ...

Like many bankers, Mr. Green acknowledged “political initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic,” but was not ready to cede the terrain to politicians. “It is very important,” he said, “that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Members of the financial services industry seemed ruefully aware of how far they had sunk in public regard. Commenting on whether private equity companies would support an Obama administration proposal on bank regulation, David M. Rubenstein, managing director of the buyout firm Carlyle Group, quipped, “Our position is unsure because we’re afraid if we come out in favor, it won’t pass.”

Perhaps the billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros summed up the ambivalence most succinctly. “You want to keep regulation to a minimum,” he said, “because it is worse than markets. But you can’t do without it.”

And so, from President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who urged creation of a new international monetary system and even a new reserve currency to replace the dollar, to angry representatives from trade unions, to the white businessmen in suits who still dominate this snow-kissed gathering, the one certainty seemed to be continued uncertainty...

Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, evoked one reason for Mr. Obama’s priorities (focus on Main Street and jobs) before a packed audience on Saturday, noting that, in the United States, one in five men aged 25 to 54 is now jobless. Although the United States economy grew strongly in the last quarter of 2009, persistent unemployment has created a situation he described as “a statistical recovery and a human recession.” ...

[A]s power has shifted toward China and South Asia, the Europeans, Americans and Japanese have watched their economies decline or stall sharply. Rebuilding mutual trust will be ever more difficult amid fears that such pain will continue and that the current generation entering the work force is likely to be less prosperous than its parents...

“In the transition phase from a superpower-dominated world to a multipolar world you will see a lot of uncertainty and you will see a lot of volatility,” said Josef Ackermann, chairman of Deutsche Bank...

Banding together in the Group of 20 that has emerged to take the place of the Group of 7 as the body to control the direction of the world economy, politicians and economists are supposed to produce policy suggestions by June... (emphasis mine)

Another quote from a central banker who does not have a clue as to the significance of a worldwide backlash against the collectivism of the central bankers (from 'Bankers at Davos Seek Unity' NYTimes 02/02/10):

Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclay’s Capital:

“You have to step back from the rhetoric.I have seen no evidence to suggest that shrinking banks and making banks smaller and more narrow is the answer.”

The baby isn't a baby. It's a manipulative little shit. Anything but complete and utter destruction of our current financial system is simply continuation of the scam that has been seen through. The baby that isn't a baby, isn't in the bathwater getting clean. It's in there pissing in it.

Timmah is saying that AIG not paying out at 100 cents on the dollar is the same as the company failing and the same as the whole insurance industry failing.

As far as I've read, haircuts on instruments that are trading in the market at a lower in retturn for immediate payment is not the same as a failure and the insurance parts of AIG were easy to keep separate

rivets coming off the submarine ... I wonder what happens if we call his bluff ..

I am begining to think that Timmy and Company fear a crash, even though they keep threatening us with a crash ... during a crash/panic secenario do they risk loosing their current level of control as the outcome of a crash/panic is unknown ???

This time, somebody coached Timmy to start off each response by agreeing to anything said, then ending with a useless twist. Senator, you're right, we are totally screwed, but this administration took immediate and courageous steps to keep us from being extra screwed."

it's his standard MO, begin a response with a statement of general agreement and then run out the clock with a rambling off topic response concluding with a statement of genaral agreement. The Senators love it because they can pretend to sound tough yet status quo remains intact.

Timmah FINALLY admitted that high debt = weak dollar... provided people lose faith that USA can pay back debt. Wonder why the Fed's MASSIVE QUEASing was not mentioned because it was the only way to manipulate interest rates down instead of reaching their true % rate. As such, higher interest rates on debt = ....

Also, Timmah's smirk on his face after 'strong dollar' interaction shows me he is total scum. Instead, he should be VERY concerned about 'strong dollar'.

And yes, i know they eally want a weak dollar to make USA goods cheaper for those who import them.

Remember folks, NOTHING OF ACTUAL VALUE backs the US dollar and so could eventually find intrinsic value of 0.

Senators: So you lied and stole money from Americans to hand out to Wall Street because they they threatened us with the Stock Market? Then you covered everything up?

Geithner: Yup. You know the drill.Systemic risk.Things would have gotten terrible in the nation, martial law oogga booga. What are you going to do about it?

Senators: Oh well we are powerless and care nothing of the people so we are going to pretend that we will work very hard with you in the coming years to feign some sort of regulation and you tell us when you are available for some more staged committees for public consumption on your timeline but in all honesty we have money unlike those in the middle class who are unemployed and watching their dollar decay so we could really give two shits. They are obviously too dumb and distracted to care because we keep them mesmerized by reality TV and Desperate housewives.

Geithner: (Shrugs) They haven't revolted yet and not an indictment so anyway the checks will be in your campaign coffers by election time.

Senators: Give our best to President of Earth Blankfein, Vice President Dimon and 10 Star General Mack. Oh and hear are some more matches and a bigger can of gasoline courteousy of Moral Hazard squared so just try to wait a few years before burning it all down again.

This directly contradicts Geithner’s claim “that the ‘people responsible’ for overseeing the insurance subsidiaries ‘had no idea’ about the risks facing AIG policyholders. He’s talking about Dinallo here. Instead of being safely segregated, Geithner said the insurance businesses were ‘tightly connected’ to the parent company. Paulson added that the healthy parts of AIG had been ‘infected’ by the ‘toxic assets.’ He added, ‘One part of the company would have contaminated the other.’” Does this mean that New York’s “heavy state insurance regulation was a sham,” the newspaper asked? It would seem that “When push came to shove, policyholders were not protected from a default by the parent company.” It urges that Dinallo be brought back to straighten the matter out.

Geithner closed his own comments by saying, “if you are outraged by what happened with A.I.G., then you should be deeply committed to financial reform.” This is rhetorical judo. The financial system in question is not the economy at large. It was A.I.G.’s carefully segregated bookies’ account for wealthy hedge fund gambles and Wall Street speculations that should have had little to do with the “real” economy at all.

It seems to be merely an incidental by-product of saving taxpayers and labor that Wall Street ended up with the hundreds of billions of dollars of gains (and losses avoided) – at a $13 trillion expense by government, of about four million jobs in the overall economy whose employment is shrinking, and of about four million home foreclosures in 2009-10. The cover story is that matters would have been worse otherwise. This was the price for “saving the system.” But “the system” turns out to be the Bubble Economy, in which the Obama administration has put as much faith as Bush did. This is why the same managers have been kept in place. This policy has enabled Republicans to strike a posture of denouncing the banks in preparation for this November’s mid-term election.

“Saving the economy” has become a euphemism for the policy of keeping bad debts on the books and saving high finance from writing them down to reflect the realistic ability to pay. Wall Street has used its bailout money to lobby Washington, back its political nominees to hold Congress hostage, and blame the downturn on any regulator or president who does not yield to its demands.

Well, for some good market news from the MSM - DR Horton swung to a profit, thanks to tax subsidies from Uncle Sugar. Also, pending sales of existing homes increased in Dec., once again primed by Uncle Sugar providing tax credits. Wonder how many are foreclosures?

Rally on, the FIRE economy is in recovery mode, and there are bouses once again on Wall Street.

The Redbook same store sales along with the worthless Goldman ICSC showed their usual small weekly and YOY sales gains, again not real and not worth discussing…

Yesterday Construction Spending came in less than expected gains with a–1.2% reading month over month, and –9.9% year over year.As in minus 10% from the same time last year, at the height of the crisis?Wow.Oh yeah, GDP plus 5.7%…because of re-inventory buying stuff that’s made in China to sit on shelves waiting for debt saturated consumers to come buy it.Please.

The ISM Manufacturing Index did rise to 58.4 which was higher than expectations.Remember, anything above 50 is supposed to show expansion…it will take years at that rate to get us back to the level of prior activity.I really don’t like indexes like this because they do not show anything but relativity.But the ISM is a strange one based on surveys anyway.But get this…yesterday the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) moved to change the definition of growth from a reading of 50 to any reading above 42.LOL!Yep, it seems that history shows to them, that the economy is expanding when the Manufacturing ISM is above 42 and therefore anything over 42 shows expansion.Sound reasonable?Based on what?Trumped up GDP data!Based on what?Trumped up inflation data and mark to fantasy financial assets! (emphasis mine)